Food sensitivities update

After having spaghetti with marinara sauce and some pine-orange-banana juice, I think it's safe to say that Gavin is not sensitive to my eating acidic foods. Whew. That adds a few possibilities to my lunches and dinners. On the other hand, all the food that was previously in our pantry (and not obviously infested with nasty bugs) has been put in the deep freezer for the week in an attempt to kill any eggs or random larvae that happen to be in the packaging (except for cans and other things that can't go in the freezer). So, I still have eating dilemmas this week.

Pantry Pests

Our pantry is infested with Indian meal moths. Yuck. I think we've thrown out at least $50 worth of food so far. Last weekend we took everything out of the pantry and cleaned it thoroughly, only to discover that these pesky creatures like to spin their cocoons in tight places - like the peg-holes for the shelves in the pantry, or in the inside corner of unopened cardboard containers of food. And, they can bore through plastic. So, we are currently freezing everything that was in our pantry that can be frozen and doesn't obviously have little nasty larvae in it (thankfully, we have Chad's parents giant chest freezer in our garage), and we're cleaning out every little peg-hole in the pantry (probably at least 150). I have so many other things I'd rather be doing with my time.... Hey, at least it doesn't look like they made it to any of the other cabinets we have with food in them.

Visiting our niece

Today we are going to visit our niece and spend the day with her and her parents. It will be the first time Gavin has actually spent a considerable amount of time around another baby (she is three weeks younger than him). More later (with pictures, I'm sure!).

Post-natal and Parental Amnesia

It's funny how quickly I forget what happened only a few weeks ago. Most of the time, it's easy to remember unpleasant times or emotions in my life, but there seems to be something special about parenthood that does the flashy-light-thing to the hard and/or painful parts of the past having to do with my child. For instance, I barely even recall that I was pretty nauseous until sometime well into the fourth month of pregnancy, that I was incredibly swollen the last couple months of pregnancy, that labor, birth and recovery were quite painful at times and very uncomfortable pretty much the whole time, that learning to breastfeed (for both Gavin and me) was a very difficult and emotionally draining thing, that Gavin was very fussy and cried a lot until I figured out that he's very sensitive to cow's milk protein and stopped eating all milk products (at about 6 or 8 weeks). Somehow it seems my brain isn't interested in keeping the memories of all the hard things. If something reminds me of them, I find myself saying "oh yeah, I had forgotten about that." But I am thankful for it. If I could remember all those things better I might have a harder time deciding to have more children.

Gavin, #3 for November

Again, a Gavin-post for today.

My husband is a nerd

Okay, so I suppose Chad doesn't have a patent on nerdiness (and isn't the only nerd in our family), but he certainly displays and revels in it often. Here's a link to his blog post today. And, for the record, I thought the comics were hilarious. And I like my husband a lot, maybe especially because of the nerdiness. Hopefully someone can save our son from being 100% nerd... (good luck to whomever that happens to be!).

Writer's block

It's only day 7 of the month of blogging and I think I've run out of things to say. Or, at least, run out of quick-but-can-still-fill-up-a-whole-post things to say. So, here are some very random thoughts that are very quick.

• I made a list of tasks I need to accomplish in the near future (by the end of the year, mostly) and it filled almost an entire sheet of notebook paper. But at least now all those things aren't swirling around in my head making themselves feel like a whole notebook's worth.
  
• I've been trying to help Gavin get on more of a routine but am finding it very difficult to wake up (and wake him up) at the same time every morning because, if he's still sleeping, I want to sleep, too.
• I did six loads of laundry (and folded and put them away) in the last two days (Chad helped a little, so it wasn't only me) and will need to do a load of diapers tomorrow, probably.
• I am really thankful for my (well, Chad's really) family, who live close. My MIL came over this afternoon and made what could have been a pretty mundane, somewhat difficult day into a nice one.

Gavin, yet again

Another Gavin post.

What to eat??

My diet has been pretty restricted (at least in my opinion, when compared to what it had been previously) since about a month and a half after Gavin was born. I figured out by trial and error that any dairy product or any food with even a tiny amount of dairy in it (including any amount of whey) makes Gavin's stomach very gassy. I'm pretty sure chocolate (even in fairly small quantities) and cabbage do the same thing. Other foods I've quit eating but am not completely sure yet if they actually cause him to have an upset stomach are peanuts, broccoli, cauliflower and very acidic foods, like tomato sauce and citrus fruits. In addition, I have been trying to avoid large quantities of soy for my own benefit. In my opinion, that constitutes a significantly restricted diet, especially because I used to eat milk, yogurt and often some type of cheese every day. But the most annoying part, I think, is that I have to read every ingredient on every label to make sure there's no non-fat milk powder, whey protein, butter, etc. , and you'd be surprised at how many things that eliminates, especially the easy ones that are low-fat and have protein! My Trader Joe's chewable vitamins, for instance, have non-fat milk powder in them. Wisecrackers are made with buttermilk. Most margarine contains whey (and I think margarine is nasty anyway). It's really hard to make a quick quesadilla without cheese. Peanut butter and jelly sandwiches are out. I can't grab a yogurt for a quick snack. Nix on almost all baked goods other than plain bread (and sometimes not even that). Can't do pasta with tomato sauce or cream-based sauce. I also have a preference for low-fat items that are minimally processed but don't take a lot of preparation time, and I need to be eating more protein. So, any suggestions??

Gavin, again

Today's post is, again, about Gavin, so it's on Gavin's blog.

Autumn

Today was a beautiful, clear, sunny autumn day. We've had maybe a week of them all put together, which is pretty atypical for Portland, as far as I can tell. The weather forecast is showing a few more of these beauties before the overcast skies and drizzle set in for the next 6 months or so. Unfortunately, I only spent about an hour of today outside enjoying it. Chad spent most of the day chopping lots of plants in our back yard (which hasn't been touched since summer of 2006), and I helped for about an hour while Gavin was sleeping. I ended up feeling dizzy because of allergies (my nose never runs but my ears get all stopped up - thus, the dizziness), so I decided the back yard wasn't the place for me. Unfortunately, we don't actually have any place where we can sit down outside in front of the house (our whole lot is only about 3,800 square feet), and I haven't quite figured out how to bundle Gavin up well so that he doesn't get too cold but still be able to carry him in the Moby wrap. Maybe tomorrow I'll get to take a walk and get some photos before the weather turns gray.

Post on Gavin's Blog

Today's post is about Gavin, so I figured it should go on his blog.

Post-pregnancy

In all the books about pregnancy, there's lots of talk about the million little things that happen to a woman's body during pregnancy. When I was pregnant, everyone was asking about my cravings, the oiliness of my hair, my bellybutton, etc. etc. etc. It was all quite fascinating. I think there's a misconception, though, in the general public (minus anyone who's had a baby before) that once that baby is out, a woman's body is acting normal again, minus some sleep of course. The pregnancy books say a little about it, but not a ton. Maybe it's because there's so much attention focused on the new baby that no one pays much attention to what mom's body is doing any more, and maybe it's a good thing, since most of the aftermath isn't terribly pretty (or socially acceptable to ask about if you're just an acquaintance). There are some people who understand that it takes a while to get back to pre-pregnancy weight and shape (but I did have a female friend look at me with wide eyes and dropped jaw - all she could say was "wow" - when I told her that I was still wearing my maternity pants at about 1.5 months!). I happen to be pretty lucky - I was back to pre-pregnancy weight at about 2 months, and I have actually lost another 2 pounds in the last month. My pants still don't fit normally, though - I'm pretty sure my hips are wider, and that might be permanent. I still have very obvious stretch marks, and my hormones are still pretty wacky sometimes. There are a few other things that I won't mention here that are permanent modifications to my body, too. I actually think it's fascinating and quite amazing that I can go from this (actually, this is at 37 weeks pregnant) to this in less than two months. Yes, there's not a 7-pound 5-ounce child or a placenta inside me anymore, but I think it's amazing.

NaBloPoMo

Against my better judgment, I signed up for NaBloPoMo (National Blog Posting Month), which means I am somehow personally requiring myself to post a blog every day for the month of November. No guarantees about quality or quantity of content (thankfully), just one post per day. I'm guessing there are going to be at least a couple of "hi, yes I do exist today, and here is my obligatory post" posts. But I will attempt to come up with something interesting to say. I think half of my trouble with posting very often is either I feel like I have nothing at all o say or I have so many things to say I can't pick which one to write about (and so I don't write anything at all). And the other half is easily summed up in the 13-pound little one who is currently sleeping downstairs (but sleeping nonetheless - thus, the TWO posts today!).

Happy Halloween!

I really haven't given much thought to the fact that today is Halloween, and we usually don't do much. However, I normally go to the store to get candy for the neighborhood kids at least 3 or 4 days, if not a couple weeks, beforehand. This year going to the store is a lot more complicated than it has been in the past, so I just managed to go an hour or so ago. To my amazement, the extreme quantities of Halloween candy that one can observe on at least one if not two dedicated candy-aisles starting the beginning of October were gone! The dedicated candy aisle was almost completely bare, except for Kit-Kat bars (I guess Fred Meyer ordered a few cases too many) and a little bit of the candy that most moms around here make their kids throw out because it's not wrapped air-tight. I did manage to find one very lonely bag of Reese's peanut butter cups and a few bags of mini Airheads on the regular candy aisle (mind you, the Airheads where on the very bottom shelf and not easy to see). I think "the holidays" that are generally blamed for the trend of weight-gaining this time of year needs to include Halloween, too!

Birth Story!

The Friday before my last week at work (3 weeks and a day before my due date) I woke up with achiness in my low abdomen that felt kind of like mild menstrual cramps. It pretty much continued all day, and I thought perhaps labor was coming soon, so when I got home from work Chad and I did a few of the last important things that needed to be done, like pack a hospital bag and such. I could tell that very mild contractions were happening by pressing on my belly and feeling the difference in the muscles, and when we timed them they were 8 minutes apart. I figured that, since they were so mild, I should just go to sleep and see what the morning brought. The next morning the achiness was gone and I couldn't feel any more contractions (bummer! that would have been 3 weeks less of my being pregnant), but it was obvious that he had "dropped" significantly. At Monday's doctor's appointment (7.16), the doctor said I was 2cm dialated, 75% effaced and -1 station. He thought the baby could pretty much come at any time but said he would be surprised if it wasn't in the next week or two.

The next three weeks are a little bit blurry to me, but the mild-contractions-all-day-long scenario repeated itself at least once but I think twice. I guess those contractions might be called Braxton-Hicks, but I never did figure out where the line is between Braxton-Hicks contractions and "real" contractions. The next Monday (7.23) I measured the same as the Monday before (2cm dialated, 75% effaced and -1 station). By the next Monday (7.30) I was getting pretty tired of the waiting game and had almost run out of interesting things to do at home (I started my leave from work 2 weeks before my due date) even though I still had a week to go to the due date. Measurements that day were 3cm dialated, 90% effaced and -1 station. The doctor said he'd willingly induce me if I wanted and we'd have to talk seriously about it the next Monday if I still hadn't gone into labor. I was getting pretty impatient (as were Chad and his whole family), but I really, really wasn't interested in being induced.

Saturday (8.4) was my due date as well as our friends' wedding, and I again was having mild contractions when I woke up in the morning. This time I decided ignoring them and going 0n with our day as planned was the best bet since this had happened several times before and it hadn't seemed to produce a baby yet. The wedding and reception were great, and we got to sleep about 11 or midnight.

I woke up at 5:30 on Sunday morning with nasty bowel cramps, so I went to the bathroom and then back to sleep. About 15 minutes later, I woke up again, with more bowel cramps, so again I went to the bathroom and back to sleep. About 10 minutes later I woke up again. Going to the bathroom didn't seem to fix the problem and my stomach wasn't feeling that great, so I made a piece of toast with jam. I didn't quite get finished with my piece of toast before I began feeling significantly worse and having more pressure in my low abdomen. I thought maybe I was having contractions again and should wake Chad so we could time them (this was about 6:45am). After about half an hour of timing contractions, we decided they were 3 minutes apart, lasting for about a minute or so each. I wasn't feeling great, but I was still walking around just fine and talking. We called the doctor, who said yes, I should probably go ahead to the hospital and have them check to see how far I was dilated (he later said he figured I was still in early labor and wasn't too concerned) and so we headed for the hospital. As we arrived (probably 7:45am), I was still generally fine and the contractions weren't terribly painful, but the pressure that was building in my low abdomen was beginning to be really uncomfortable. By the time I got into a wheelchair and made it to the maternity ward I felt better with my eyes closed and I was pretty sure this was the real thing. I think they checked my cervix at 8:00 or 8:15 - 7 cm dilated. I laid down in the hospital bed for a few minutes before I threw up. Two nursed tried three different times to get an IV put in my arm but weren't able to do it. At some point (after giving up on the IV) the nurse asked if I wanted to go to the jacuzzi tub. I'm not sure how long I was in there, but at least the last 30 minutes or so my body was trying to start pushing, but the nurse said I was only at 8cm and couldn't. Keeping my body from pushing while having a contraction was the second hardest thing, I think, only followed by the actual pushing process. Finally at about 10am the nurse checked me again and said I was at 10cm and we could go back to the room. I think my contractions were 2-3 minutes apart most of the time. I actually walked back to the room (there was no way I could even think of sitting down at that point). My contractions never got any further apart and even started double-peaking during the pushing process (annoyingly contrary to what we had learned in our Bradley birthing class - I had been looking forward to a little break). About an hour an a half later I could see the baby's head crowning, but I couldn't get him any further out. I think about this time until the birth was the only time that I actually wanted to give up and didn't feel like I could keep going, not because of pain but because I was so worn out. We decided to do an episiotomy since it seemed that I was very tight and would definitely tear and that the tightness might be keeping the baby from being born. After two different snips, the baby still wasn't coming out, and the doctor said that it seemed that his shoulders were a little stuck. I was exhausted and couldn't keep pushing through the whole contraction, and the baby's heart rate started to drop during the contractions. The doctor decided to try the vaccuum extractor, and within 10 to 20 seconds during the next contraction, with me pushing and the doctor pulling, Gavin finally emerged. That was about 11:45am, only 6 1/4 hours after I had woken up that morning.

Gavin had a full head of red hair when he was born and weighed 7 pounds and 5 ounces. I think his Apgar scores were 8 and 9. The nurse put him on my stomach within a minute of his birth, but I was so exhausted that I had a hard time keeping him from slipping off. I don't think I really had many thoughts or feelings at that point other than relief that it was over with. I wasn't very cognizant throughout most of the labor process once we were at the hospital. It seems now almost like a dream - for certain, my brain was not functioning like normal. I birthed the placenta sometime in the next 15 minutes or so and was then stitched up (and my brain was recovering, too). Chad went out and announced to everyone that we had a little boy! (we hadn't known the gender until birth). I was told later that there were about 15 people waiting immediately outside the birthing room door while I was pushing, listening intently for Gavin's first cries. My mom and dad (who were on the east coast at the time) even got to hear him through my MIL's cell phone.

Gavin nursed for a few minutes within the first hour and latched on at least once more for a minute or two after that but then wouldn't latch on at all until about a day and a half later, with much effort and frustration and the help of a couple lactation consultants, first a syringe with a tube and sugar water with a finger to stimulate his sucking reflex (which apparently was NOT well developed) and then later a nipple shield with the syringe and sugar water. The short breastfeeding story is that we basically had to teach him how to suck. We were overjoyed when he finally would latch on to the nipple shield with less than 45 minutes of crying preceding it on Wednesday (I think - the days run together when you only sleep a couple hours every night). He lost one ounce less than 10% of his body weight, and my milk started to come in just in time so that he started gaining weight back and we didn't have to give him formula. I think by the end of the week he was taking the nipple shield relatively well (meaning, less than 5-10 minutes of crying before latching on). Over the next 2 weeks or so I gradually weaned him from it (again with much effort and frustration), and now he is a champion at nursing straight from the breast. I feel like that synopsis by no means conveys what a huge effort and how emotionally wrenching it really was. At one point at some wee hour of the morning during the first few days were were home from the hospital, I'm not sure if it was Gavin or me who was crying more, and poor Chad had to console us both. Thankfully God gave us grace for the moments as we went through them, and I am very happy to be on the other side.

Gavin's own blog

We decided to have a separate blog for Gavin, so here's the link: http://wmgavin.blogspot.com/
Enjoy!

Photos

For photos of Gavin, see our flickr site:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/cm_young/

We'll be uploading more in the future, but for right now there are just photos of him on his birthday.

It's a boy!

I know it's been almost a week, but life has been crazy! William Gavin (he'll go by his middle name) was born on August 5 at 11:45 am after about 6.5 hours of labor. He was 7 pounds 5 ounces and 20 inches long. I'll have to write more about the whole experience later.

We are so in love with our little boy! He is incredibly cute (and it's not just me who thinks so). I am continually amazed at the fact that he was inside me less than a week ago. God has given us such a wonderful gift! I could not have anticipated what a joy it is to have a child. We've been getting very little sleep (last night was the most since birth at 5.5 hours, divided up over about 3 feedings), and nursing is still quite a bit of a struggle, but we are making it through and loving it.

T minus one month

It's been quite a while since I posted last - I discovered that preparing for a new person's arrival into the world is a lot of work! And probably not nearly as much work as afterwards! As of yesterday I am 8 months pregnant and still feeling good for the most part. (Unfortunately, I don't have any good pictures to post that include my belly.) I'm trying to make sure I think of the "due date" as more like a "due month" so that I'm not too surprised when the birth happens early or, more likely, late. So really, it's quite likely that a new little one will make his or her appearance into the world about 2-6 weeks from now. :-) I am very ready to be finished with work, at least for the time being, but I still have two more weeks to go. Sometime in the past week or so the fact that I am soon going to be a mom has started to seem weird to me, and very exciting and incomprehensible, all at the same time.

My father-in-law wrote a book about a year ago and it is now published ("The Shack")! It was never in his plan to get the book published - he wrote the story as a gift to his six children - but it seems that God has other (better!) plans. :-) It's been amazing to hear how profoundly the book has affected so many people. You can read more about it (and read the first chapter, I think) on the website. It's a fictional story interlaced with simple truth about the reality of God's love for us.

There's not too much else in other news. A friend, who is getting married at the end of August to another friend, moved into our basement last weekend, which is very fun for us. I am hoping she doesn't mind crying babies too much!